by Nevada Barr
A fan would be nice, but the teepee has no electricity. Marinating in her own toxic waste, she stares at the apex of the tent where a smoke hole that has never known smoke exposes a fragment of light-polluted sky, streetlamps turning a high thin overcast a pale orange.
The end of the world would be pale orange, Rose thinks; the last ding-dong of doom would ring out from the speaker of a cell phone. This night she has held a fellow human being at gunpoint. Drugging Karen—twice—and wrestling with her on the MCU’s floor hadn’t left Rose as . . . what? Changed? Drained? Battered?
Because of the gun, the evil triumvirate of guilt, aversion, and fear is tainted with the nearly imperceptible scent of smug self-satisfaction. What is it about human beings that so loves violence? Gladiators, football, war, hunting, cockfighting, books and television and movies filled with bombs, guns, and gigantic beasts of various origins all wreaking the most horrific havoc: people love it.
A piece of Rose loves it: John Wayne, Sigourney Weaver, Melissa McCarthy, the Wild West, and WWII. Heroics; that is what Rose can’t resist. Not the violence, she tells herself, but overcoming evil with good. Sacrificing self for others.
Maybe.
Then maybe human beings are hardwired to beat their wives, burn witches, lynch African Americans, guillotine royals, waterboard Muslims, and shove guns in medical health workers’ faces, to get their own way. A nasty bit of business on her part, she has to admit that. This is a dastardly deed even an adorable little old lady won’t get away with. The MCU people might not bother to mention that the gun wasn’t loaded. Not that it matters.
Chase, capture, trial, sentencing—all that frightens Rose. Worse is going to be Mel’s disappointment, perhaps even condemnation. Gigi has not only held a nice lady at gunpoint, she’s lied about the fact that she was going to do it. Not only that, but Rose is going to go right on lying to her granddaughter, at least by omission. Mel can know nothing about the night’s events, or where Chuck has disappeared to. On some not-too-distant day, Rose will be processed through the legal system. She does not want Mel to be subpoenaed and forced to participate in getting Gigi locked behind bars.
Rose sends out a heartfelt sigh. She has screwed things up, but she doesn’t know what else she could have done; nor does she have a clue as how to go about unscrewing them.
Karma, she decides. This whole saga has to be her working out an outrageously weird previous lifetime. That is the only thing that can explain why a moderately pleasant Buddhist painter finds herself lying in a pool of sweat in an urban teepee staring at a tangerine sky.
Forcing herself upright, Rose takes off Izzy’s ruined blouse, uses it to mop up the worst of the perspiration, then replaces it with one of the old T-shirts Royal has contributed to the cause. The slacks come off to be replaced by a pair of plaid boxer shorts Flynn has unwittingly donated.
Rose turns to her electronics.
Doctors’ care is provided by a pool from the Longwood hospital, rotating in as needed and as their schedules permit. Food in the MCU is the same as is prepared and served in the main dining hall. Nothing promising from those arenas.
Marion has also processed the staff of the lockdown unit. There are eight nurses and four orderlies staffing the seven-bed unit. Rose reads down the names: Karen Black—the cola-loving nurse—Shanika Sanders, and six names Rose doesn’t connect with. Their shifts hadn’t coincided with the handful of lucid hours she’d enjoyed while incarcerated. The orderlies, all male, are Jason Farber, Kenan Bowls, Sean Powell, and Anthony Brevard.
Rose lifts her gaze from the screen. Anthony. Tony. T. Brevard.
Rummaging through her few piles by the light of the computer screen, she ferrets out the papers on Eddie’s truck. On the third page is the handwritten notation: T. Brevard. This is the note that turned off Goodman’s genial flow of information and sent him gesticulating out amongst the Buicks, cell phone to his ear.
She crawls over to the daypack she’s been using and upends it on the zebra hide. Amid other detritus is Carter Goodman’s business card, complete with phone number. Rose punches the number into her cell phone. On the third ring a familiar voice says, “Goodman here. What can I sell you?”
Rose laughs in spite of herself. Drat. Roughing up her voice to what she hopes is official-sounding, she says, “I’m calling about Anthony Brevard.”
A moment of silence passes; then a sigh gusts out. Carter says, “What’s he done now?”
Bingo, Rose thinks.
“It’s regarding that truck you held for a Mr. Martinez.”
Carter groans. “I really don’t know anything about it.
“T. Brevard. You know about him,” Rose presses. “Who is he?”
“My brother-in-law,” Carter admits. “I know better than to get mixed up with any scheme of Tony’s, but I always cave. Please don’t tell me it’s stolen.”
“Where does your brother-in-law work?” Rose asks.
“He’s got a job as an orderly for a hospital. At least he had. If he got himself fired from this one, I’m going to kill him.”
“Did he own the truck?” Rose asks.
“Like I said, I don’t know anything about it. It was one of those friend-of-a-friend deals.”
“And you don’t know who the friend-of-the-friend is?”
“No. What’s this all about?”
He doesn’t sound like he is willing to talk anymore without a little quid pro quo, and Rose can’t see any harm in telling him the truth. “The truck was payment for a hit job.”
“Holy Christ!”
“Nobody died. Everybody lived—so far—not exactly happily ever after, but that’s neither here nor there. I need to know who was paying the would-be assassin.”
“You’re the lady that stole the paperwork,” Carter says.
“That would be me, yes.”
“Was it you somebody wanted killed?” He sounds incredulous. This annoys Rose.
“They should have held out for a Hummer,” Carter says, redeeming himself.
“Could you ask your brother-in-law for whom he did the favor?” Rose asks hopefully.
“Turn on family, and rat him out to a strange woman who didn’t even buy a car?” Carter asks.
“That would be a big help,” Rose says.
Another puff of air gusts through the ether. “Shoot,” Carter says. “What the hell. My sister can’t be any worse off with him in jail than she is with him in the house.”
“Text,” Rose says. “I don’t have voicemail.” She taps the red END CALL button.
T. Brevard, an orderly at the MCU, had arranged the payoff to have Rose killed. He was probably either Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum. Neither one struck her as deep or cunning; not criminal mastermind types. Of course, she was drugged to the gills the few times she’d had any interaction with them.
She returns to the attachments Marion sent. The manager of the unit is a woman named Wanda Lopez. Rose remembers her. Mostly she remembers the new Corvette she’d driven so sedately, and the bright-colored suits.
Reading on, she finds the orderlies earn thirty-eight grand a year, the nurses seventy-two grand, and the manager one hundred twenty-nine grand per annum. Not enough for a Corvette, but Wanda might have other sources of income. Illegal income?
Then Rose sees the smoking gun. Not smoking exactly, but definitely warm. Before Wanda Lopez was promoted to manager she worked as a pharmacist, then manager of all the hospital’s pharmacies. Wanda’s was the bejeweled hand that gave her the spiked orange juice.
Rose sets the iPad down, lies back, and stares at the scrap of discolored sky. A pharmacist in a unit for hopelessly demented people, people with money, who might live a long time, long enough all that lovely money will vanish into the black hole of elder care.
How easy would it be to help them along?
Easy as pie.
How easy to substitute meds?
Pie.
Getting drugs to not-yet-demented oldsters outside the facility? Rose can picture a
close friend or family member working with Wanda. Easy to order capsules identical to the kind the victim takes—and all old people take something. Then Wanda substitutes the bad drug for the good. All unsuspecting, the victim goes on taking the medicine. The dementia-producing drug is upped slowly, maybe at a crucial time—like the death of a spouse—when people are expected to suffer mentally. The victim becomes less and less lucid. Then a flyer from a respected care facility is put front and center. An answer to the beleaguered family’s prayers.
Rose is willing to bet that would work often enough that a few people could make a good living, everybody along the line getting a cut: the heir, the inheritance; Wanda, a druggist’s fee.
There has to be at least one other person involved. A person in a position to interview family members, find those who are amenable to a little murder to help the money flow from generation to generation more rapidly. A person who procures the victims to be delivered to Wanda’s kind ministrations.
Who could get to Flynn, Daniel, or Nancy, as well as the not-brother and/or Barbara Boster? Did the victims have a geriatrics specialist in common? A therapist? Psychiatrist? Car mechanic? Someone who routinely worked with, and was trusted by, elders and their family members?
Too many questions. Fatigue catches up with Rose. Closing her eyes against the pale orange, she relaxes her body.
Rose is sound asleep, the iPad on her stomach, when a scratching sound claws her into terrified wakefulness. Her first unworthy thought is that she wishes she hadn’t left the gun behind.
“Gigi? You better be in there.”
A moment of sleep-fog robs Rose of her short-term memory. It clears. Her night out with Eddie floods back. She renews her conviction that, lie though she must, she will not infect Mel with the truth about what she has done.
Mel opens the flap. At least, a creature with Mel’s voice shines a blinding cell phone flashlight in Rose’s eyes. From the clashing beams and the trampling of feet, Rose surmises Royal is with her.
Mel sits down with an audible thud. “You are in so much trouble, Gigi. I told you not to go anywhere without us.” Mel is much aggrieved. Angry, but not curious. Maybe she is miffed because Rose didn’t call her to let her know she was safely home from her fictional date with Brian the Lyft driver.
“What?” Rose says, hoping to sound innocent and slightly annoyed at being awakened. She glances at the glowing screen of Mel’s phone, flashlight now blessedly turned off. Ten forty-seven. She’s slept for over an hour.
“Dad’s coming home. Grandma Nancy is on the warpath. Uncle Daniel is stoned. The police are all over with lights and stinking badges.”
Rose’s mind whirls. Has she told them and forgotten?
“It was all on TV,” Royal explains. “They had hidden security cameras. They showed you doing . . . all that stuff.”
“Hidden security cameras?” Rose gasps. “That’s a trespass on patients’ rights to privacy,” she says indignantly.
“Maybe they thought they needed them now because somebody kept breaking in, drugging the night nurse, and snatching old men,” Mel retorts. “Oh, Gigi! How could you? That poor nurse—you held a gun on her.”
“Poor nurse my aunt Fanny!” Rose flashes in self-defense. “That ‘poor nurse’ shot at me six times!”
“The gun wasn’t loaded,” Mel snaps.
“And a good thing, too!” Rose argues. “If it had been, somebody might have gotten hurt. I should at least get Brownie points for that.” She looks from one young face to the other. If soft child-flesh can be said to be stony, theirs is. “No Brownie points?”
“No Brownie points,” Mel says flatly.
“That guy in the Trump mask, who was he?” Royal asks.
Rose buries her face in her hands. “No one special,” she mumbles through her fingers. She’d known the manure was going to hit the fan; she just hadn’t thought it would be so soon, or so public.
“When you said you had to get Chuck out of there, I thought you meant you’d get a representative to walk in the front door and check him out like a civilized person. Not go all Rambo and gunslinging, with a henchman, for God’s sake. In a mask! This is so bad, Gigi.”
It is. It is so bad. Rose feels her guts collapse inward, her stamina crumble, her plans implode. The wild hare chase she’s been leading herself, and these kids, and the police, is over. She is so tired she would weep, except it would only add to the crushing sense of guilt and failure.
“How did you get in?” Royal asks. “I thought the unit was locked from the inside.”
Rose wonders if Karen destroyed the placards so she wouldn’t have to admit she was tricked into losing her temper and opening the door to villains.
Before she has to answer, Mel asks, “Did you really leave the gun so the nurse wouldn’t lose her job?”
“That was on the security tape?” Rose asks.
“Everything between the edge of what must be the reception desk to the hall where the Donald Trump guy went to get the old man,” Mel says.
“That old man is Chuck Boster, my friend. I did this to save his life,” Rose says. Cheap shot. Though it is true, she hasn’t said it to communicate truth. She’s said it to make Mel feel bad. Unfortunately, it works. Mel’s face softens into guilty sadness.
Rose wishes she could take it back, but words spoken are actions done. No more lying. “Partly to save her job. Partly in hopes the police could trace it.”
“Where did you get it?” Royal asks. He doesn’t sit, but stands in the parting of the canvas as if a sudden departure might be required.
“TMI,” Rose apologizes. “It’s probably untraceable, though. Numbers or something filed off—whatever experienced criminals do.”
“You have to turn yourself in,” Mel says.
Rose tries to think about that, but her mind is opaque, a recently clear pond choked with duckweed.
“The news reporters were interviewing the cops,” Royal says. “Everybody is talking about you being . . . unstable.”
“Criminally insane, Gigi,” Mel declares. “That’s what they said, that they think you might be criminally insane, and a danger to yourself and others. Nobody is supposed to talk to you, just call the police.”
“You could get shot,” Royal says. “Grandma had that happen when she was practicing criminal law. She had this guy who got shot because the cops were so scared of him they didn’t give him any time to comply. Just bang!”
“Please, Gigi, you have to turn yourself in.” Mel is crying. Rose can barely stand being in her own skin.
“You could go in with Grandma,” Royal suggests. “I think she’d do it if I asked her. She knows all the judges and attorneys. It won’t be pro bono. Grandma doesn’t do criminals for free.”
Of course not.
And Rose is a criminal.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Ask your grandmother. I’ll turn myself in.”
“Now?” Mel demands.
“Grandma goes to bed after the ten o’clock news,” Royal reminds her.
“I bet she’d get up if she knew the star of the ten o’clock news was hiding out under her bedroom window,” Mel says.
“Let her sleep,” Rose begs. “Let me turn myself in tomorrow. Maybe a night free of drugs will clear Chuck’s mind. Besides, there is one last thing I need to do.”
Mel sucks in a breath. Probably to yell at her.
“Don’t worry,” Rose says. “It’s safe, legal, and necessary. After that, I’ll go to jail.”
Everybody will be safer then.
Chapter 28
Greene and Associates will be glad to accommodate Mrs. Dennis at such short notice, and, yes, attorney-client privilege most certainly does apply to clients of estate lawyers. Rose warns Ms. Greene that her passport, credit cards, driver’s license—all her ID has gone missing. Ms. Greene assures Rose the firm has everything on file from when she and Harley did their estate planning six years before. As Alma had met Mrs. Dennis on that occasion, there will be no diff
iculty establishing identity.
This is all done via email. After the previous night’s video, until Rose has confirmation on the attorney-client privilege part of the deal, she has no intention of revealing so much as her phone number. The video from the MCU’s security camera—Mel calls, half alarmed, half excited, to tell Rose—leaked and has gone viral. Already it has over seven hundred thousand hits. Mel also informs Rose that “about a zillion” related items come up if one Googles “Gun Granny.”
Gun Granny.
Rose cringes. Could ageism and sexism have made a more unholy match than “Gun Granny”? What is wrong with Vixen Vigilante? Senior Siren? Armed and cantankerous? At this juncture, Rose would settle for Walker Woman. “Gun Granny” is horrid on so many levels she might actually welcome solitary confinement.
Given this excrescence of notoriety, Rose has no doubt her estate lawyer is aware that consulting about the will after her husband’s unexpected demise isn’t the only issue her client has with the legal system.
The upside of the YouTube phenomenon is that Royal’s grandmother, Elizabeth Pryor, has not only agreed to accompany Rose when she turns herself in but will represent her in all things pertaining. Royal promises Rose can’t find a better criminal defense attorney than his grandma. What better recommendation can Rose ask for?
Not that she has to ask. Now that she is a media sensation, everyone and his or her dog is clamoring to represent her. Mel calls to let her know Uncle Daniel had to unplug the house phone and that after her dance class, he and she will be driving to the Highlands. A friend of her dad’s has a cabin there. She and Daniel are to hide out for few days until, to quote Flynn, “I get this finalized.”
Not a phrase that comforts a felon with a target on her back.
At two thirty, dressed in another of Izzy’s outfits—a gray pinstriped skirt, a fitted cap-sleeved blouse in white cotton, black patent leather flats, and an ear-length auburn wig, shingled into gentle flying buttresses to either side of her face—Rose calls for a ride.
Once the will is changed, she will breathe easier. Flynn, Daniel, and Grandma Nancy will be removed, if not from suspicion, at least from the temptation to make any future attempts on her life.